stevenkesslar

Well, you just ruined my day. I thought this was a game. Are you telling me this is actually real?

I posted this in the other forum. The Chinese doctors just published an article this week stating that Kaletra does not help with recovery. They are still looking at the malaria drugs. I'm posting the link to what I posted in the Politics Forum. It's about FDA approval and political stuff, but it does have information on the latest thinking about the efficacy of some of these potential drugs - like the partly political process to determine efficacy. Kudos to the scientists and doctors all over the globe who are both putting their own health at risk, and figuring this out at warp speed. I'm just posting the link. No politics here. https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/is-president-toxic-just-incompetent-or-is-he-a-sociopathic-liar.156619/#post-1878668

Thanks for posting that. It says in the fine print that it needs to be doctor prescribed. The doctor will first try to rule out if you have the flu. And if you have been in contact with someone known to be infected. That's all consistent with what I'm hearing from Kaiser, my health care provider. At least for now, it makes sense that we just need millions of test kits. And the priority should be people who are symptomatic, or who know they have been exposed, or perhaps are in a high risk population. There are now headlines about outbreaks at nursing homes all over Florida. They may have to reconfigure nursing homes like hospitals, and keep the at risk people who are infected away from the at risk people who are not infected. I hope they figure out some kind of "public/private partnership" model on this. It is a no brainer to let several private corporations that are great at pumping out tests make these things and get them to anyone who wants them, including perhaps at the government's expense even once the crisis passes. There will be some false positives, like with any tests. But it presumably would catch 90 to 95 % of all true positives. Ideally something like this will also be tied into public health departments, which any major city that is likely to be a hot spot will have. In China they have an almost Orwellian sounding system in place to be able to track down anyone infected and anyone that they may have exposed. Americans may not like that. But it did get the job of eradicating the virus done - if we assume what China is saying about current infection rates is mostly true. If we start with the assumption that we don't want to start a whole new TSA - in this case the Thermometer Security Administration - we will still need a way to get on top of new local outbreaks at warp speed. State and local health departments are one obvious way to do that. In theory, Seattle's health department may have been able to nip this in the bud, had they been prepared and equipped. Theory will never match reality. But once we get the genie back in the bottle we ought to be able to keep it mostly in until there is a vaccine.

What I want you to know about coronavirus, from a Seattle woman who recovered from COVID-19 Here’s what I want people to know: You will most likely be fine if you get this. We’re all hearing a lot about what it’s like to have the worst version of COVID-19, which is one reason I want folks to know what it was like for me. My friends and I are recovered, or almost there. None of us had to be hospitalized. The kids I know who’ve been exposed have emerged without a scratch; that jibes with findings from around the world. We all need to look out for those who will not be fine. Testing personnel and materials are scarce, and resources are rightfully going to help those who most need them. Which means that yes, untested, untreated people are walking around with this virus. One of them gave it to someone I know, who gave it to me. But rather than looking around at your fellow humans and wondering if they’re going to give you coronavirus, think about whether you might be the one giving it to them. Try not to be that person. If you’re sick, stay home. If you’re not sick, know that you might still transmit it, so wash those hands, wipe those surfaces and stay out of spitting distance of other people! The feds aren’t going to save us. With federal agencies decimated and disorganized, we’ve learned, sadly, that we can’t wait for someone at the top to tell us what to do. I’m glad the Seattle Flu Study folks didn’t wait. The lack of national coordination is reason for deep disappointment, but it’s not a reason for despair. Instead, I hope this realization strengthens our resolve to do what we have to do. We are going to save each other. Did you ever wonder how you would have acted if you had been caught up in one of those difficult times in history — the American Revolution, the flu of 1918? Do you hope you would have been one of the brave, helpful ones? Here’s your chance. I love that folks are starting to think about how they can assist vulnerable people of all kinds, whether that be an elderly neighbor or a struggling small business. I’ve been buying gift certificates to use after this is all over and donating to help artists. We all need to pressure elected officials, right now, to implement policies that will help those most affected. We all need to help health care workers do their jobs by doing ours — and right now, our job is to keep each other healthy. As for me, I’m wondering what I should do next (once I’m out of quarantine, that is). I’m hoping to hear good news from research into whether having had the virus gives us immunity going forward. If it does give me immunity, I hope to use that superpower for good. This is our once-in-a-lifetime challenge. Let’s rise to it. What can I say? Some of us like to bang pots. Some us like to write.

I'm posting this mainly because of the last paragraph. Italy’s death toll soars to 3,405, surpassing China’s. Italy, which has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the world since the coronavirus first began to spread, passed a grim milestone on Thursday: it announced that deaths from the virus had soared to 3,405, outstripping the toll in China, where the virus first hit. With the crisis mounting, Italy is increasingly turning to its military for help. Cemeteries in the northern city of Bergamo are so overwhelmed that the army was called in to transport bodies elsewhere to be cremated, and the army sent 120 doctors and health professionals to help in Bergamo and nearby Lodi, two cities in the Lombardy region, while field hospitals and emergency respiratory units are being set up elsewhere in the north. The spread of the virus in Italy has been swift, and terrifying, even after the country became the first in Europe to impose strict limits on people’s movements to try to curb the outbreak. As the death toll grew, traditional funeral services were outlawed as part of the national restrictions against gatherings. The country tallied 902 deaths in the last two days alone: 475 Wednesday and 427 on Thursday. Most of those who died had serious pre-existing conditions, officials said. Italy now has 41,035 cases. The Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, said in an interview in Corriere della Sera Thursday that he expected the government’s restrictive measures to limit movement would be extended past the current April 3 deadline. “The restrictive measures are working, and it’s obvious that when we reach a peak and the contagion begins to descend, at least in percentages, hopefully in a few days, we won’t immediately be able to return to our regular lives,” he said. In the face of relentlessly bad news, Italians have risen to meet the crisis — the worst the country has faced since World War II — with fortitude, and creative attempts to keep their spirits up. Some housebound Italians, trying to follow social distancing rules in a famously social country, began serenading one another from their balconies in the evenings. And many began taking to their balconies to applaud the doctors and medical workers risking their own lives on the front lines, a show of communal gratitude later emulated by Spain and other countries. It's a good time to be scared, but it's also a good time to be grateful. Mostly, it's a good time to be prepared. Another way to think about this is we are soldiers now. There is a group of Americans for whom these kinds of restrictions on liberty are typical: the military. And we are at war. Military medical ships have been dispatched to New York and California. As that article says, there is every reason to think that military-style field hospitals may need to be set up in hot spots. It's now incredibly clear that the ethic that is the best for a situation like this is the ethic of the military: "one for all and all for one". Some version of that was true all over China. In Wuhan, the medical system was completely overwhelmed. They had to bring in thousands of doctors and nurses from other parts of the country and building emergency hospitals overnight. In the rest of China, very few people died. There are provinces in China that are larger than any state in the United States where the death rate was literally zero. They had maybe 500 to 1000 cases. But because the hospitals were not completely overwhelmed, like they are in Italy right now, everybody who did need life saving hospital care was able to get it. To the point that you could argue, "Why the overreaction? Why the fuss?" What's clear is that the reason so few people died and they can now start getting back to normal is that there was a sort of enforced, but temporary, military discipline. Probably more important is that there was a deep cultural belief that we are all in this together. "One for all and all for one." Had they not done that, it's also clear that every province in China would have been as bad as Wuhan, or worse. What the Italian Prime Minister said is now sinking in everywhere, I'd guess. We won't be able to immediately get back to our regular lives. The fact that we can look forward to doing that gradually is something to be grateful for.

Who knew? Even handsome young college students are all escorts now, too. Sathvik Namburar achieved several feats during 2014 while passing out of High School - He had a perfect score in ACT, was a valedictorian, won US Presidential Award. Medical students like me can fight on the front lines against coronavirus We might not be able to treat patients on our own. But as hospitals and centers become overwhelmed during this crisis, we can help lighten the load. Everyone must do what they can Before I saw any patients that day, my supervising physician counseled me on the importance of asking for the travel history of anyone with coronavirus symptoms. Throughout the afternoon, I overheard clinicians speaking in hushed, anxious tones about how people would be tested for coronavirus and where to send patients who could possibly have it. Left unsaid in all of these conversations was the risk that the clinic’s providers were taking every time they entered the room of a patient who had a fever, cough and/or shortness of breath. My supervising physician told me to be extra careful to wash my hands before and after seeing every patient, but we did not discuss any other protective measures throughout the day. As I prepared to leave, my supervising physician offered a warning: “The virus is in our community now,” she told me, “and ready or not, it is my job as a doctor to be on the front lines combating it. In this line of work, we take an oath to take care of our patients, and we are needed more than ever now.” Students have fought pandemics before It is not unprecedented for medical students to join the front lines in combating a pandemic. In 1918, a severe doctor shortage meant that third- and fourth-year medical students were enlisted to treat waves of Spanish influenza patients, sometimes with little training or preparation. We medical students should begin training now in case the new coronavirus pandemic becomes worse and our contributions are more urgently needed. Because most medical students are generally young and healthy, we are not among the high-risk populations for serious illness from the coronavirus, unlike some of the older physicians who are treating patients. And we can easily be taught to use the proper protective equipment to reduce the chances of spreading the virus. When we put on our white coats for the first time, we willingly accepted that one day we would be responsible for treating patients, no matter their affliction, to the best of our abilities. Now, we may be needed sooner than we once expected. We are ready to help. Sathvik Namburar is a second-year student at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. There's been a lot of discussion in the last week about ideas like this. Gov DeWine is guessing there could be as many as 100,000 people infected with COVID-19 in Ohio alone right now. I hope he's wrong. No one knows the hospitalization rates for sure. And everybody is working 24/7 to figure out how to keep people who do not absolutely require hospitalization out of hospitals. For example, in New York they are working on a protocol to give people oxygen saturation meters that can be monitored remotely by nurses. If I understand the idea correctly, which I may not, normally a patient who even needed oxygen level monitoring would be in a regular hospital bed. Because she said if you fall off the cliff, you go into shock. A lot of the patients in China then went into sepsis. And then you are moving very much into "this could go either way" territory. As the author said, under normal circumstances, Coronavirus treatment is not something any college medical student would be involved in. If the numbers DeWine is throwing around are right, having college medical students doing low-level tasks could free up others to do the life saving stuff. There's been a lot of talk about how young Millennials are going to get the Coronavirus in bars, and be just fine. Then they'll go visit Grandpa and pass it on. And Grandpa won't be fine. There's also may be a lot of young Millennials like this guy, who rise to the occasion to keep us well.

Thanks for the offer, Auggie. You're such a sweetie. It's one of the reasons I have so much respect for you. That said, Nancy's got my back. More importantly, she has my tenants' backs, which was of course the point of my rant. But then, you knew that, already. Can't say more than that in this forum. But we're good. And thank you for exposing your altruism. Not to mention your fangs. They're adorable. Let me me know if you need a hand with anything, though, Auggie. Like toilet paper. I'll just make sure to wear gloves.

And anybody in the US with a brain or a calculator would think, "That might be why we need to stop domestic travel, and perhaps have a national one month quarantine." A week ago we could be excused for thinking that it's okay to go to a place with few infections. We should now realize that by doing so, we are just digging our hole deeper. We'll leave California to go to Kansas. By doing so, we'll turn Kansas into California. And by the time we get home, California will look like Italy. And if you do happen to get sick along the way, good luck with that. There is no Glinda, and no Wizard Of Oz. Better to just jack off and think, "There's no place like home." This problem will solve itself. If @goosh69 is right, we'll be under martial law. Gov. DeWine thinks there's 100,000 infected people in Ohio. If he is right, and they keep infecting more people, we're into Great Depression. Sanjay Gupta said the theory is that once you get past 1 % of the population, you just can't do containment anymore. So basically you then jump to 20 %, or 40 %, or 60 %. Maybe that's just a theory, and maybe it's wrong. But it scares the shit out of me. Ohio has just under 12 million people. So if DeWine is right, they are pushing 1 % already. That alone means maybe 10,000 hospitalizations and 1,000 deaths. Try doing the math if it jumps to 20 % or 60 % of the population, pretty much all at once.

I own a bunch of real estate. I'll tell you my personal take on that. It is a crap shoot. Mostly, our fate depends on things you and I have no control over. I know my fate depends in part on national leadership. By that I mean: 1) the money I have in the stock market, a big chunk of which just evaporated; 2) the real estate I own, which is most of my net worth, 3) if I am unfortunate enough to contract Coronavirus, and then doubly unfortunate to get really sick and require hospitalization. If I lived in China in anyplace other than Wuhan, the third point would not be a concern. The death rate was between 0 % and 1 % in each province. I'm pretty sure the issue was not inadequate care, but just being really old and sick. In Italy, the death rate looks to be closer to 10 %. Including some younger people. I'm not in a risk group, but I don't really like those odds. If we have a tidal wave of death like Italy, it's going to further undermine confidence. Our economy is built on consumer confidence. People won't go to movies and plays if they think that puts them in a hospital without beds or respirators. So the scientists are now the economists. If we want to avoid a Depression, we should do exactly what the scientists say. They are unanimous. Before this hit, I figured when the recession came it would be like a "9/11 recession". In the US, that actually lasted from March 2001 to November 2001. It came after a decade long bull run. It was past due, but an unexpected crisis helped it along. Take away killer airplanes, add a killer bug, and it's kind of the same thing. During that entire time period, home prices mostly went sideways. There was no big housing slump around 2001, like there was in the stock market. The S & P 500 lost about half its value. If the question is how far the S & P might plummet, losing half its peak value in this recession might not be a bad bet. Average home prices now, in real dollar terms, are as high as they have ever been. My house is worth $400,000. That's actually the same or a bit lower than you could have sold it for 15 years ago, at the height of the California bubble. When you adjust for inflation, that means it's actually much cheaper than it was at the height of the predatory lending bubble. So it's not cheap. But it would have to go up a lot to get back to 2006 levels. My best guess until a month ago was we'd go through a modest recession, like in 2001. Like in the chart above, around 1999 to 2001, we'd just have a housing market that went sideways. So far, that is actually what's been happening. I also figured if I'm wrong, this won't be like the predatory lending crisis. There may be a bubble, but not like 15 years ago. In fact, there is massive unmet demand - by Millennials, in particular. They are old enough to want to actually own homes to raise families in. Spending a few months stuck in a crappy little apartment, maybe with a sick partner or kid they can't isolate, will only reinforce their desire to own a larger home with a guest bedroom. If prices go down a little, and are a bit more affordable in 2021 or 2022, so much the better for them. They'll buy. If we can do what China and South Korea and even Kuwait managed to do, and get this virus under control in two months, this will not be a Great Depression. The idea that we can eradicate it, now that it is all over the globe, is probably wishful thinking. That said, if it can be controlled in China and South Korea, it can be controlled here. 9/11 is probably actually a very good psychological model. We didn't eradicate terrorism. We did learn to live with it. To extend the analogy, we did prevent any other attack that killed 3000 people in one city. We did not stop an attack in Paris or London, that killed a fraction of that number. Our biggest mistake was we overreacted with the Iraq War. So, if we are smart, we can control this if it pops back up in Paris or London, or Chicago or Atlanta. Hopefully, we will be on top of it immediately. Let's just avoid going to war with Iran or China, okay? The good news is that everything I am saying is based on science. The really good news is that nothing I am saying is rocket science. Right now, we desperately need some honesty. And some clear rules on public health that we will all want to follow. For our own good and for the nation's good. Yes, I'm talking Dr. Fauci. He's my hero right now. (Well, him and @purplekow, who is literally in the trenches.) Now, this next part is NOT science. But it is what I think will determine whether we have a recession, or a Great Depression. It involves two communications with two of my tenants. Next week I'll communicate with all my tenants, to see how this is impacting them. But these two reached out to me. I suspect in part because they are scared, and want reassurance. The first is a youngish couple with two kids. It was no surprise that they have no income right now, and are sheltering at home. They told me they are fine, and they have enough money to pay April rent and maybe May rent. I told them I'm fine, and will be giving all my tenants some sort of temporary partial rent credit. But I don't know what it is yet. If they get $2000 or $4000 in checks in the next few weeks (they are talking about $1000 or maybe $2000 per adult) that would help a lot. I will probably cut their rent $500 a month or so for the next few months. As long as they can go back to work by June, they'll be fine. That scenario sounds to me like a V-shaped recession. China's unemployment rate just went up 1 %. That's not a Depression, if the world comes back with them. The second tenant is a good friend and escort buddy. During this phone conversation he told me he had only one appointment scheduled this week for $300. He asked me whether I thought he should take it. I told him emphatically if it were me I would cancel it. Apart from the fact that we both have a local order to shelter in place, I think it would be nuts to maybe get sick, or maybe get someone else sick, for $300. I did tell him if this was any number of clients that used to hire me years ago for a week or two, and one of them wanted me to hunker down with him on the clock for a week, I might do that. I'm not morally opposed to COVID-19 whoring between two consenting adults. That said, my inner Dr. Fauci tells me it's probably a bad idea. The longer we have new cases of people infecting yet more new people, the longer this once in a century crisis goes on. If the government will pay me $2000 for a vacation from whoring, I'm happy to watch porn and jack off, personally. He is also my tenant. If he follows my advice I know he doesn't have enough cash to pay rent for two months and still have money for food and anything else. Again, $1000 or $2000 from the government would help him a lot. To me, this is a no brainer. The more people that say, "Ah, fuck it" the more people get infected. The more people that get infected, the more people end up in hospitals. The more people end up in hospitals, the more stress it puts on a medical house of cards. And the more people die. At some point, it's a very ugly downward spiral. Aka "Italy". If this goes on for six months, which it could, we're all fucked. None of my tenants will be able to pay me rent. I won't be able to pay my mortgages. I've just revealed something I never did before: Steven Kesslar's Secret Recipe For A Great Depression. I'm a shitty cook, folks. I'd suggest we give this recipe a pass. China and South Korea did figure out how to contain this virus in two months. If we can all just stay home and get tested and treated as needed, we SHOULD be able to go back to work by June. I have zero confidence that our current leader will ever be ahead of the curve. But we are moving out of denial, I hope. So it will probably take more like three months. I'll figure it out as I go, as I always do. But there is no question what will keep us out of a Depression. We have to all agree that we are all in this together. And we have to agree that we will just wait a few months to touch, or kiss, or fuck. If we can do that, we'll just have a recession. Think of the recovery as makeup sex, or a deferred orgasm. We just need to stay home and stay well. That is what I'm telling all my tenants. There are millions of small businesses that I suspect are thinking pretty much like me. They are trying to be both smart, and compassionate. That doesn't have a partisan bias, or a party label. I do believe this is America's finest hour. We'll pull together, just like we pulled together after 9/11. If we do this right, it will be like the 9/11 recession. If we fuck it up, or if the virus just turns out to be smarter than we are, all bets are off.

I'm adding this as an amendment to the above. Again, I think if we want to know whether we are heading into a recession or a Great Depression, the best thing to do is ask a scientist, not an economist. I posted a different part of this long interview in a different thread. Dr. Fauci is a straight shooter. The answer to whether we will have a Great Depression or not is ................... we don't know. But we know what we can do to tip the scale to the recession end. The good news is that other countries have proven they can suppress or mitigate this in a few months: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102777/south-korea-covid-19-daily-new-cases/ It's not great news that in the last few days the number of new cases in South Korea have inched up a little. But the US as a whole is now diagnosing over 1000 new cases a day, which was the peak in South Korea back in late February before they hunkered down. HH: Now Dr. I want to close with you, and Senator Cotton’s coming up pretty quick. But the big unanswered question, because I don’t know that many members of the White House press corps have actually read The Great Influenza, is that between its appearance in Kansas in the spring of 1918 and its devastating second wave, it went through 12 iterations according to John Barry’s book. And the second and third and fourth, they got deadlier. The hardest question for me to answer is during the summer when the virus appears to disappear, will it be iterating into a more deadly virus? Is there any science to tell us if we’re like getting crowd immunity, or if it’s going to come back in a more virulent form? AF: You know, we do not know. When we suppressed the SARS Coronavirus, it went away and never came back. We are hoping that if we can suppress this by mitigation and by containment over the next few months that when we get into the deep summer, that it will disappear. If it doesn’t and comes back, hopefully, that will give us more breathing room to develop therapies as well as a vaccine. But the direct answer to your question is we do not know if it will come back and how it will come back. It’s a possibility, but we just need to be prepared for it. I'll springboard off what Dr. Fauci said and suggest an optimistic way to think about this. The worst case scenario is that there will be a second, and even deadlier wave, this Fall. But it pretty much can't get worse than Ebola or AIDS, as far as mortality to untreated individuals goes. So let's assume that happens. We don't know when we will have "herd immunity", which is a term scientists generally use to describe the purpose of a vaccine. It's up to us whether we have herd intelligence. It's completely up to us. And that is exactly why South Korea was on this quicker than most. They've been through this before, fairly recently. In effect, the acquired herd intelligence. If we can get this genie back in the bottle, the optimistic view is that like China and South Korea and Singapore we will be far better prepared to not let it back out.

Who knew? Hugh Hewitt is an escort now, too! I read this interview shortly after I wrote that post above. I offer it in a nonpartisan, apolitical spirit. Dr. Fauci was a hero to the Gay community on AIDS. He is being a hero to America and the world, again. God bless him. I think the spirit of this is right on target. HH is Hugh Hewitt and AF is Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Anthony Fauci ... on Coronavirus and Day Two of the Great American Shutdown HH: Now I want to drill down on seniors. My target audience, we’ve got 6 million people who listen to this show. The vast majority of them are between 45 and 64, but we’ve got a lot of older people as well. A lot of grandparents, including me, all of my grandkids are under 9. This weekend, I was going to go drive and see them, because my daughter’s alone. My son-in-law is deployed. And they’re three kids under 9, and she said to me yesterday, don’t come. Is she right? AF: You know, she is. Right now, what we’re trying to do, and you know, yesterday at the White House Taskforce press conference, we made an announcement to really ratchet up some of the guidelines for what we call physical and social distancing. And one of them if you have someone who is elderly and particularly an elderly person with an underlying condition such as heart disease and lung disease or diabetes that puts them at an increased risk of getting the complications of Coronavirus, if in fact they get infected, you really want to protect those vulnerable people. So the guideline, as stringent as it sounds, I think it’s, it’s not I think, I know is appropriate because it has worked in other settings, is to essentially have these individuals, the elderly, self-isolate in the home for at least the next 15 days to see what the direction of this outbreak is. And that means physical separation. Now you don’t want to make someone so socially lonely that their life is miserable, but you want to physically separate yourself from them, because a young person might go out into the community, get infected, and we know how from good experience with China, with South Korea, and now most recently with Italy and France, that younger individuals who get infected tend to do very well. Some of them have minimal symptoms as opposed to the chance of getting into trouble. So a young person may go out, get infected, and inadvertently come back and by physical interaction with the elderly or those with compromised immune systems, might actually infect them. And then the consequences are much more severe than a younger person getting infected. HH: So Dr. Fauci, I’m going to use myself as an example, and we’ll expand from there. I’m 64. I’m in terrific shape. Just had my physical. Ran seven miles on Kauai a week ago, in fact, the Spouting Horn. I know you run every day 3 ½ miles. I’ve got runner’s back and a tear in a rotator cuff, but I’m in great shape. My grandkids are healthy. You would still tell me don’t go visit them? AF: No, you know, I would tell you the following: that as a general guideline rule, you should not. But you know, when you talk about the elderly, particularly if as you say you are otherwise really quite healthy, you know, there’s a numerical age, and there’s a physiologic age. And some people who are 55, 60, are really kind of, you know, compromised because they don’t age well, where some people 75 and even 80 who are vigorous, athletic, and they do well. So when you get a guideline, you have a cut-off, and you say well, if you’re 70 years of age or older, there really needs to be some flexibility in interpreting that. I mean, if you want to be totally safe, then you overshoot and say okay, I’m 60 years old, I’m 65, but I’m very, very healthy, but I’m still going to self-isolate, because even though I’m very healthy and I have no issues or problems, I’m not going to take a chance. You can do that. You can do that. HH: Well, let’s expand it out, Dr. We’ve got seniors who live for golf and who live for tennis. And they’ve got regular golfing partners, and they’ve got regular tennis partners. And they want to go to their club, and they say oh, it’s all very clean, and I’m only going to see the caddy, and I’m only going to see the bag boy, and I’m going to play 18 with my friend who’s also very healthy. Do you want them to stay home? AF: Well, in general, yes. HH: Perfect. AF: But again, with exceptions. For example, you don’t want people to have crowds that are 10 or more. You don’t want to say after you’ve been one on one with someone you then go to the bar and have a few drinks with 50 people in the bar. HH: Yeah. AF: Those are the kind of things you don’t want to do. But if you want to bend on the side of caution, I would say even though it’s relatively low risk to go out and mingle with a few people, for now, for the 15 day trial period, I think it’s the better part of valor if you are an elderly person to just hunker down for a couple of weeks, see what the trend of the outbreak is.

It does not have to be. I posted this in a different forum. But this is an apolitical "the facts, the facts, and only the facts" view: In China, the world’s second-biggest economy after the United States, the jobless rate rose to 6.2% in February, the highest since records began, and up from 5.2% in December. The majority of Chinese businesses and factories – apart from the epicenter in Hubei province – have reopened, but it is unclear how many workers and staff have actually returned. In the [uS] airline industry, tens of thousands have already been laid off or put on unpaid leave. The U.S. state of Nevada, home to the casinos of Las Vegas, effectively shut its entire leisure industry overnight. The sector employs 355,000 people - a quarter of all jobs in the state. A few caveats. Any data from China should be viewed with a little suspicion. But it's an apples to apples from pre-crisis to midcrisis. China spent February in shutdown mode. Which is to say Wuhan, a city comparable to Detroit, was literally shut down. And the rest of the country slowed down. This can not be stated enough. Shandong is the second largest province in the country, with about 90 million people. That's over one quarter of the US population. They have had 761 cases. There are 746 recoveries, 7 deaths, and 7 active cases. A lot of US states right now are in better shape than Shandong was in terms of case loads. Let's keep it that way. The imperative to prevent a Great Depression is to act now. In Jiangsu, a coastal province north of Shanghai with 80 million people, there were 631 cases and 631 recoveries. There were no deaths. Jiangsu is over ten times the size of Washington state, where there are now 1014 cases and 55 deaths. If we let every state turn into Washington, and Washington turn into Italy, that's a recipe for a Great Depression. There is a near consensus from both economic and health experts that we can't begin to know the long-term economic impacts until we contain the immediate health crisis. That will determine whether this is a V-shaped recession, or a Great Depression. I strongly suspect that "20 % unemployment" language is what any responsible leader would do in a situation like this: tell people what the worst could be, in order to rally support for doing immediate and urgent things that will prevent the worst outcomes. China is not out of this yet, although they report that they only have a few dozen new cases a day now. And while I will never forget that they started this thing, we won't get back to normal until we are trading with them again - which involves both safe goods and healthy people. Unemployment during the Great Recession peaked at about 10 %. It is almost a given that we will have as big or bigger a bailout as we did to dig our way out of that. So I can't think of a reason why we would need to have 10 % unemployment, or even anything close to it. Dr. Fauci is not an economist. But right now I think the scientists are the best economists around. I think his goal is to get Americans hunkered down, so that we can be like Shandong, or Jiangsu. They will take a heavy hit. They have already. But it won't be a Depression, as long as we take the steps that we know worked there, or in South Korea. Again, the scientists are the best economists around right now. One of the experts on Ebola and other diseases said his practical experiences dealing with real outbreaks in real time is that speed trumps everything. If you wait for the perfect plan, you will fail. You have to do everything you can to contain the virus as quickly as you can. I think that right there determines whether this is a V-shaped recession, or a Great Depression.

So here's a piece of good news to savor while you are sheltering at home. We are all escorts now. Every one of you gets to think just like the best escorts in the United States do. Congratulations! I'm posting this partly in response to two things: the thread on whether escorts websites should voluntarily shut down, and the announcement of the cancellation of the Palm Springs pool party. I don't want to weigh in directly on whether escort websites should voluntarily shut down. Other than to say that the question pretty much answers itself. I think we all know what the word voluntary means. It's a decision to be made by the people who run those websites. The analogy of the restaurant on that thread was a good one. There are two decisions being made: one by the restaurant owner, and one by the customer. If customers don't come, restaurants won't stay open. That is what is happening to restaurants, cinemas, and escorts right now. The AIDS analogy was a good one, too. @Benjamin_Nicholas didn't say it quite this way. But we didn't decide to permanently ban sex. In fact, even the hint of a suggestion that the problem was Gay sex caused a huge and very understandable negative reaction. It's very understandable that there would be a similar reaction when we're being told that going to a bar or going to a beach somehow causes a problem. What we did do to contain AIDS is temporarily close bath houses, which later were safely reopened. We did massive public education about the need to change individual behavior until treatments or cures were found. That alone was arguably the single most important and effective thing to do. It probably saved millions of lives globally. The key messages on AIDS are ones we all know. Use a rubber. Don't share needles. The fact that we all know these messages, and most of us practice them, is why they have been so successful. And why you are reading this, rather than in a grave. We can thank the scientists who figured it all out for that. Having a sort of vaccine for AIDS also has changed the game. But that took a long time to develop. Hopefully it will take much less time to develop a vaccine for this virus. Until then, a lot of this comes down to individual responsibility. It's important to understand what keeps us safe, and observe those rules. For that reason, we are all escorts now. For 18 years or so I lived with the knowledge that the next client I met could infect me with something nasty I didn't want to have, or share with others. Having sex with the wrong person in the wrong way could have killed me. COVID-19 means we are all escorts now. Thinking smart about this and acting responsibly as individuals is what is going to keep us alive. Any escort worth his reputation can tell you that. Morals and money aligned perfectly. Even if I had no scruples about being sick and getting people sick, it was just not a very good business plan. The same applies to restaurants. Before this crisis, restaurants that had outbreaks of salmonella paid for their mistakes dearly, both in their reputation and their bottom line. We're all now in the same situation. Forget about a kiss. The best knowledge on this virus is all it takes to infect someone you care about is to have dinner together. There's another part of the escort ethic that applies. It basically just sucks. But it is particularly important right now, since we are not up to speed on testing and tracing yet. I hated having to call clients to say I had gonorrhea or scabies, and I might have infected them. But I did. And I also got a few calls from public health departments telling me that somebody unnamed had had sex with me and I should come get a test. That will be part of our future, if we want to beat this thing. Until the tracing protocols are set up, I know my plan. I plan to stay negative to COVID-19. And if I do turn positive, I'll tell anyone I think I likely exposed. To be honest, I had a morally relative view of that. There were people I definitely called, because I'd had sex with them very recently. I knew that as much as it's a shitty call to get, they would hopefully end up appreciating the warning. The client that I met only once, and a week before I knew I had the clap, didn't get a call. I figured it was very unlikely I infected him. Maybe I rationalized, but I figured the cost of having him worry and have to get a shot he probably didn't need wasn't worth it. Once tracing protocols are set up, there will be clear recommended guidelines for this with COVID-19. Health professionals will follow them. For the time being, anyone unfortunate enough to be infected can choose whether to follow them voluntarily and inform the people you were close to. So all the lessons we learned from AIDS, and all the best practices of the best escorts, apply to this situation. Getting out of this situation as quickly as possible, and as healthy as possible, depends on one thing more than any other: individuals making responsible decisions based on really good information. That's one very good reason why a website like this one is particularly important right now, actually. The bureaucratic jargon is "harm prevention". Escorts know a lot about living - and living well - in a "harm prevention" community. That said, I think we now all realize that we need massive and pro-active government leadership. Back in the scariest days of AIDS it was government organizations like the CDC, or local health departments, that were hammering the public about the need to use rubbers, and not share needles. Right now we are being instructed by the same organizations, and in some cases the same leaders. We are being told to shelter at home, or not have gatherings of 10 or more, depending on where we live. Dr. Fauci, who is my personal AIDS hero, has been very clear pretty much since this started that we all need to hunker down. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can unhunker, and focus on humping again. These are the same people who told us to use rubbers and not share needles. They kept me alive as an escort. I'm counting on them to do it again. Not to sound scary, but reports coming in from Italy suggest that a lot of people in their 30's are ending up in ICU units. Worse, they are getting the respirators that 70 year olds need as a matter of life and death. This virus could come in waves and mutate, just like the Spanish flu did. So it's not 100 % clear that the virus in Italy is exactly the same as the one that has been contained in China. Or that this is mostly a serious personal health risk for 70 year olds, but not 30 year olds. For that reason, I applaud @Oliver's decision. I was observing the discussion happening there without commenting, since I didn't feel like it was any of my business. It is actually probably a good model for decision making. This is a once in a century crisis, hopefully. And it changes by the day. In the midst of that, informed and responsible people can mostly be counted on to make informed and responsible decisions, I think. And speaking of Italy. They are proving that they are all escorts now, too. Buona salute, amico mio!

My rant continues. I'm including two more specific things from that second American Greatness article, which is thoughtful, factual, and hopefully actually life-saving. The first is the "flattening the curve" image. I was thrilled to see this in American Greatness. Something - perhaps a 12 % drop in the Dow? - changed reality overnight. This image completely demolishes the incorrect and dangerous idea that we have only a 0.000000155963303 chance of contracting Coronavirus and dying. Kudos to American Greatness (and Tucker Carlson on Fox) for telling older people who rely on those media outlets the truth. Second, believe it or not, I have lots of conservative impulses, too. And democratic ones - small d, not big D. China should have hell to pay for acting like a police state that punished a doctor, and as much as killed him, in an attempt to cover up the truth. They unleashed a global pandemic. That is all real. But right now, it looks like state capitalism or socialism or whatever you want to call it wiped out a killer virus in the most populated nation on earth. And we Americans can't seem to organize our way out of a virus-infested paper bag. Forget Trump's "finest hour". Is this what America's "finest hour" looks like? There is this warning from the second American Greatness article: Bad policy. There is an almost irresistible temptation for policymakers to “do something” and many of the incentives combined with the preexisting condition of bad ideology will militate toward bad policy. We do not, for example, want the government to create a “temporary” surveillance commissariat to monitor everyone’s body temperature or anything like that which could become a permanent fixture in American life. Think of the prospect of an agency equivalent of the TSA but patting you down every time you venture into public. Its logo would be a fist encased in a latex glove. Some of the most well known conservatives on this message center, who I will not name, can attest to my long rants, in person, about how much I despise the TSA. Hell hath no wrath like being late for a flight with a certain conservative on this message center. About a decade ago, I missed a flight at LAX to join him in Mexico. The TSA shut the airport down for three hours as part of some stupid "practice" exercise. Meanwhile, while I waited, my flight left. And yes, I carry a grudge. Multiple Congressional hearings pretty much document that you could put a nuclear bomb through one of those scanners and the "dipshits" who monitor them would be unlikely to notice. So if American Greatness is predisposed to oppose some new unionized bureaucracy that helpfully checks our temperature, I would tend to agree with them. But even if we are able to contain this virus, which looks next to impossible given the level of cooperation we are showing today, then we have a new problem. It is, in fact, the problem China has today. It's a problem we should really want to have. They have a stock market that slid only 10 %, not 30 %. And today they have 20 people from abroad who showed up in their country infected with COVID-19. So what do we do? Not screen them? Get real. In China, of course they are going to screen their temperatures. And quarantine them. Why are we not talking about this today? Do we want to be prepared, or not? Because how, or even whether, we can lift travel bans to Europe or China is probably more important than the availability of toilet paper or onions. I'll predict what will happen. China will be the first one to recover. It already is. And nations like Italy will look to them, both for strategies to keep people alive, and strategies to recover and grow. Is that really what we want? I mean, I'm happy that today, finally, we actually are all on the same page that this is not a hoax, or fake news. But can we maybe keep the whole reality thing going here? How do we stop this exponential virus growth if we don't actually act like we are all in this together? And once we get ourselves well, how do we stay well? Some of you guys are supposed to be the experts at making America great again. I'm all ears. Let's hear it.

So is denial, I guess. I get the point that if the issue is Americans getting sick and dying, a sentence is about all we can afford to read. That said, here are two stories with polar opposite views of reality and government. Turns out other people can be as verbose as me. This Is An Emergency! For the good of the country, and especially for the good of our leaders, we must prorogue Congress. We must do it today! And since we do not know how long this plague will last, we must do it indefinitely. As I write, the news has just come in that a total of 60 people—60!—have died from the scourge of the Wuhan virus. Do you realize that in this country you have a 0.000000155963303 chance of contracting and dying from this dread disease? Especially if you are over 80 and in poor health. The Real Threat(s) from Coronavirus Social distancing is nothing compared to a crisis that leads to mass casualties, economic collapse, and a legacy of bad policies that leaves the country weaker than ever before. When there are more patients than resources, for example, more patients who require intubation and a ventilator, than there are ventilators, then doctors have to choose who gets a treatment that under normal circumstances would be available to any and all who needed it. And then the fatalities shoot up. This is about preparedness. And facts, facts, and only the facts. Both of those articles are written by American Greatness, a right-wing journal. They are both worth reading in full. They describe completely different views of America, completely different views of government,, and - most importantly right now - completely different views of how to save American lives. And they were both written by conservatives, one day apart. The first article shows so much contempt for Congress that it sarcastically suggests we should just get rid of it indefinitely. Some version of that might happen. Today Marco Rubio said we can't assume that the Senate will be able to convene in a month, if lots of Senators are sick or quarantined. Woo hoo! Problem solved, right? Lock the dipshits away! There's a few minor problems, though. We will probably need about a $1 trillion Depression Prevention package. So for people who love $1 trillion deficits, woo hoo! You get double the pleasure, double the fun. Let's make it $2 trillion, shall we? Or would you rather have airline bankruptcies, massive small business failures, workers without paychecks, and - perhaps importantly - too few ventilators to keep you and me alive? Not to worry, of course, given that there is only a 0.000000155963303 chance of contracting this dread disease. Somebody issued the Reality Memo today. Instead of saying that the number of cases would go from 15 to 5 to 0, we now have more realistic advice: stop having gathering of more than 10 people. Even that is poor advice if we really want to stop this thing. That said, it's dramatic progress from a complete disconnect from reality. The second article in American Greatness, one day later, is actually grounded in the dire reality we are in. We are now talking about a stock market freefall. And a global death toll that is growing exponentially. Hey, why worry, right? Fauci’s warnings “I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting,” he also said on “Meet” yesterday, adding: “I think Americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing.” And here was Fauci on CNN: “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars.” Granted, these dipshits in the government are always reactive. Nothing ever changes, right? And not that anybody actually wants to read long articles about how we must collectively prepare as a nation. Like right now. Immediately. Urgently. The cities with the most infections are now all moving into lockdown. We may get to martial law. I actually hope we do. Because that way everybody might realize this is lethal. For now, we're still at voluntary compliance. It has worked in South Korea, where everybody actually expected their government to coordinate a massive pro-active effort to save lives. Listening to Dr. Fauci could make sense. He was one of the top virologists in the middle of the global effort that spared Gay men of a permanent death sentence called AIDS. And yet, we have a massive problem. My point here is not to be partisan. It is to be factual. Like that second American Greatness article is. It states, correctly, that we are staring "mass casualties" and "economic collapse" in the face. So let's see. How about if we go out to dinner and celebrate? In fairness, that poll was completed before Fauci said stop going out to dinner. Or Trump finally dissed gatherings of more than 10 people. This "government dipshits arr wrong" attitude is a huge fucking preparedness problem right now. The scientists like Dr. Fauci, who are desperately trying to stop another killer virus, are the ones being pro-active. We're the ones being reactive, and wrong. This is a nonpartisan problem. 64 % of Democrats and 88 % of Republicans intend to ignore Dr. Fauci's advice, according to that poll. I'm sorry, but it is irresponsible and dangerous to mock government and write that 80 year olds have a 0.000000155963303 of contracting COVID-19 or dying of it. The only good news is that a 12 % plunge in the Dow has perhaps been a needed wake up call. We are both half right. What China did in the first half of January is a case study in reactive government. They could not be counted on to save the lives of Chinese citizens. But what they did after that is the exact opposite. They wiped out a virus in a few months. The total new infections in Wuhan today is one. We should only be so lucky! 11 extreme measures China took to contain the coronavirus show the rest of the world is unprepared for COVID-19 Not to drag out the idea of being prepared any further, but that article lists 11 things that probably saved millions of Chinese lives. The number of infections was below 1000 when China went to extreme measures. The US is closing in on 5000 cases now. That's doubled from a few days ago. Of those 11 points, this is the most relevant to the idea of collective preparedness: In contrast to reports in the US of people clamoring over the last hand-sanitizer, Aylward said he was struck by the attitude of people in China that they were all in this together. "This is not a village," he said of Wuhan, which is bigger than New York City. "As you drive into this city, in the dead of night, the lights on, it's a ghost town. But behind every window and every skyscraper there are people cooperating with this response." There are two very important rewards for this kind of collective preparedness., whether it's what China did harshly or South Korea did softly. First, there is only one new reported case in Wuhan today. There are 20 more cases in China, all imports from abroad. So now China will have to build a Great Wall, to keep the killer virus out, until we get our shit together. Sure makes democracy looks good, right? Woo hoo! Second, the Dow has now plunged 31.7 % from its pre-crisis peak. The Shanghai index is 10.9 % below its pre-crisis peak. By the time we're done, the US will be lucky if we only have three times the death and economic damage as China. Government can be pro-active, and save lives. And when it does, there seems to be a huge payoff.

https://www.msnbc.com/onassignment There was an interesting one hour On Assignment on this. 99 % of the info I get is reading, not TV. But this adds some very interesting visual images. Including what it's like to work in one of these highly secure labs where really lethal viruses are kept and researched. Those moon space suits look less complicated. Just imagine all the medical professionals and scientists who get to dress like this when they go to work everyday. If you click on the link above the top episode link as of today should be titled: Outbreak - March 8, 2020 The show is sliced into segments, but the one where they literally walk you into a highly secure lab where they keep the virus is this one: Outbreak: We've been here before If you click on that it should take you to a 7:53 segment, partly filmed inside one of these labs. The scientist interviewed in Danielle Anderson. She's interviewed in several segments of this episode. At one point they are in a cage with a bat, and she basically suggests that eradication is not really an option at this point. The horse is out of the barn, Or perhaps we should say the bat is out of the cave. So we're going to have to live with it, until there is a vaccine. A few weeks ago, or even a week ago, that did not seem so obvious. Now it does.

Before Trump’s inauguration, a warning: ‘The worst influenza pandemic since 1918' In a tabletop exercise days before an untested new president took power, officials briefed the incoming administration on a scenario remarkably like the one he faces now. I'm putting this here rather than in the politics forum because I think it makes a nonpartisan or apolitical statement about collective preparedness. We've crossed a threshold this week. We're now past 9/11. The death toll in the US is barely 100. But before long it is next to certain that more Americans will die of COVID-19 than from terrorist-flown airplanes on 9/11. The hope now is that the measures governments at every level are taking will limit the scope of this to something that is not much worse than what happened in Wuhan. The difference can be measured by the words of the leader we are all counting on to guide us through this. As recently as Feb. 27, this was the message being sent: Speaking about the 15 individuals diagnosed with the coronavirus on US soil, Trump said that “the 15 will soon be down to three, four.” The people being treated today were the ones being infected right around the time that was said. Now we are being told by the same leader not to have gatherings of more than 10 people. So that right there makes your case. Anyone expecting the government to save them from disaster is going to be a casualty. That said, if we don't expect government - including the CDC and the scientists the government funds - to save us, what's Plan B? If we don't expect the government to keep airlines and small businesses and people being laid off who have mortgages to pay whole - what's Plan B? I saw who hit the like button on your post. And i get it. In part, going after Big Government is always an easy target. And, in part, this episode is proof of concept. We obviously couldn't count on the government, either in China or the US, to prevent this nightmare. Again, I'm going for nonpartisan here. I read an interesting article in a conservative blog. Someone pointed out that they are always asked by liberals why they are so concerned about Muslim terrorists, when way more people die in car crashes every day than die at the hands of terrorists. The answer was pretty good. The guy said the potential for something really horrific to happen is exponentially worse with terrorism than it is with a car crash. 9/11, of course, proved that to be true. Since 9/11, I think the vast majority of Americans agree that government has done a reasonably good job of preventing terrorism. At least we haven't had another 9/11. Now that we're having the first massive viral 9/11 of anyone's lifetime, at least in the US and most of the West, this one won't be forgotten, either. America, and the world, will go back to normal. But it will be a new normal. I think the difference between your perspective and my perspective may come down to two words: assume, and expect. In context: Anyone assuming that “government“ will save them from disaster is going to be a casualty. Anyone expecting that “government“ will save them from disaster is going to be a casualty. I strongly agree with the first statement. I rabidly disagree with the second one. All I have to do to explain why is go back to those two very different statements above. Anyone who assumed that saying "15 will soon be down to three, four" would save them from disaster is potentially in trouble. For all we know, somebody who was sitting in the room when he said that at a large gathering was already infected. On the other hand, I do expect that the government is going to save us from a viral disaster. Just like I think that conservative probably did speak for most Americans, including me, when he said Americans expect their government to save them from some terrorist disaster. There are, of course, limitless disasters that could befall us. For example, we don't know whether this is a prelude to an invasion by aliens. Or whether those aliens are coming from Pluto, or from some other galaxy. Most people don't feel it's a priority for their government to prepare for that right now. We usually are better at understanding what we have experienced. That's why, thankfully, South Korea was way more pro-active on this one. Scientists everywhere are racing to learn from what worked, and what failed, there. This isn't just a philosophical argument. Some preparedness is individual, like whether we wash our hands. But the things that are really going to matter most on this crisis, and will save most of the lives that are going to be saved, all involve collective preparedness. So right now we're being told that there should be no gathering of more than 10 people. Either we expect the government will save us from disaster, or we don't. I do. Two weeks ago, I felt that my government was completely and massively dropping the ball. As bad as this all is, I feel relief that my government is now on this, and taking the steps that need to be taken. The other concrete reason this matters right now is that it is very basic to democracy. China proved both of us are half right. They completely fucked up the front end of this, and unleashed a global pandemic. On the back end, they have put the genie at least partly back in the bottle - in China. Whether we like the way they did it or not, we learned some things about what types of measures it takes. In the course of a few months, China was both tragically reactive, and amazingly proactive. Clearly, reactive is not better - at least in a situation like this. The difference between the US and China is that we have a government that is not only in some way accountable. It is also elected. It is very easy, especially now, to win points by arguing that government sucks, and we should have very low expectations. I'm not saying that is exactly what you are saying. But it is certainly the way a lot of people feel. It's a horrible way to run a democratic country. And what is happening right now is proof of it. The incompetence pandemic The first victim of the coronavirus? Leadership. I'm tossing that in because the headline itself can be taken as proof of your argument. Government. Sucks. Always. Like I said, It's always easy to blame it on government. But here's a simple test of how much you really believe it. Let's just separate all the people who expect government to work, and to save us from disaster, and all the people who don't. All the people who think government can save us are going to South Korea until this is over. The infection growth rate is sloping down. There are 8,320 cases and 75 deaths. All the people who think government can't be expected to save us are going to Italy until this is over. Infection and death rates are out of control. They have 27,980 cases (they had less than South Korea a few weeks ago) and 2,158 deaths. Just be sure to bring lots of soap. Speaking of soap, you and I are personally responsible for whether we wash our hands, or touch our face. It doesn't work that way with government. We're both going to have to live with the kind of government the majority expects. And, in fact, we are. Trust no one? Americans lack faith in the government, the media and each other, survey finds “Many people no longer think the federal government can actually be a force for good or change in their lives. This kind of apathy and disengagement will lead to an even worse and less representative government," one survey respondent said. There is a kind of herd immunity argument that applies to government as well. The more people that actually believe that government can not save us from disaster, the more likely we will all end up actually getting what we expect. Perhaps not coincidentally, people in South Korea are getting what they expected, too: SOUTH KOREA: TRUST MAKES A COMEBACK Korea’s 17-point jump in trust in government among the general population was the largest of any market studied in the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer. While Koreans now trust their government much more than they did a year ago, government was also seen as the most broken institution by 43 percent of respondents, more than double that of any other institution. Despite this, government was also seen as the institution most likely to lead Korea to a better future. Government is seen as much better than before, but it needs to improve further to help the country continue to grow.

I think what used to be so panic-inducing about AIDS was that it was a death sentence. And often enough it was a death sentence for the young, the beautiful, the talented, the artists, the people in the prime of life. Now it is something that allows people to feel they can mostly live a "normal" life. And as this virus is proving, nobody really knows what a "normal" life is. You could live to be 100, or die in some freak accident tomorrow. We're all one diagnosis away from having something like cancer, that could kill us. Life goes on. Your personal observations are eloquent. The standard is probably not to eradicate this. It is to figure out how we get back to a new normal.

We'll all have lots of time. So one book to read or movie to watch is, "And the Band Played On." If you haven't already. I can't speak from personal experience like @Charlie or others. But I thought that book was a masterpiece. It captured many of the emotions that are playing out now. I think everything that we need to know about how we get through this, both individually and collectively, is in that book. Different century. But much of the shit is the same. I see the book as part tragedy and part hope. The tragedy part is playing out right now, except much faster and globally. To paint it in intentionally simplistic terms, it was a war between emotion and denial on the one hand, and science on the other. Lots of people died in the process. The scientists ended up being mostly right, and finding out what caused it and how to treat it. We still haven't figured out how to eradicate it. But we can control it, and live with it. That's probably the most likely outcome with COVID-19 and the family of similar viruses. That's the hope part. I hope this doesn't offend anyone who was there when it all happened. I was not out at the time. So I could read the book more as objective history than as personal trauma. I know people who had whole networks of friends wiped out. What was very poignant to me was the anguish and denial in the Gay community. There was a sense that we finally are able to live the kind of life we want, more or less openly. And now we are being suppressed again, and told we can't go to bathhouses because they have to be shut down. That's the stage we are in right now. It must be even more frustrating for people who aren't used to having to live in the shadows, or hide certain behaviors. You mean I can't get on a plane, or go to a bar, or a pool party? Fuck that nonsense! Many people right now are just clearly ignoring the warnings for voluntary compliance being made by Mayors and Governors. Spain is already using the police-operated drones that China used, to warn people wandering around in public to go back home. And some people will worry too much, or even panic. Which right now is probably a good response. It is probably better to be safer, and not sorry a month from now. This is like AIDS, but played out about 100 times quicker. The good part of that is that with AIDS it took a long time to know how to protect ourselves, let alone be treated if we got sick. Two months into this, we know a huge amount already. I'm not trying to make out any part of the Gay community to be the villain. But there were people who thought the government was just full of shit. Just like right now there are people taking the position that this is all one massive overreaction. As has been noted already, there was another part of the Gay community fighting for their lives and demanding the government act big, and act now. I say this as a matter of fact rather than as a partisan statement. Nancy Pelosi was right in the middle of that, with the Ryan White Act. So we can be thankful, I think, that we have leaders that have been there and done this before. Dr. Fauci is another one. Every time I see a picture of him or read something he says, I feel a little comforted. Randy Shilts, the book's author, died of AIDS. The fact that he is seen by some as a Betty Friedan of the LGBTQ+ movement and by others as controversial, or just wrong, speaks to the depth of emotion and differences of opinion when a crisis like this hits. Some of you know Lucky. I once got into a discussion with him about Shilts. Having lived through it all, it took him about 10 seconds to go from 0 to 10. So I just dropped the subject. This may not be the time to say this, but I think the legacy of COVID-19 will be very much the same as AIDS. There will be elements of panic, like there are right now. But the word that probably best sums up where we will end up when the cloud lifts is this: purpose. That's an optimistic view. But I'm an optimist. AIDS united the LGBTQ community and organized it, for its own survival. It also humanized us to the rest of the world. That laid the groundwork for everything that came after, I think. Including same sex marriage. The silver lining in this dark cloud is that it is almost certainly going to do the same thing. When this passes, there will be other global pandemics and other global challenges we face. I think we will have a deeper sense of purpose in doing so.

Surgeon general trumpets coronavirus efforts but warns ‘we are not an authoritarian nation’ “A lot of our public health authority lies in the state and local level, and I have worked for a local health department and a state health department,” Adams continued. “And what we’re seeing now is that these state and local health departments are saying, ‘Give us guidance. Give us more cover. We want you to come in and tell us what we should be doing to protect ourselves.’” “People, we are where Italy was two weeks ago in terms of our numbers, and we have a choice to make as a nation: Do we want to go the direction of South Korea, and really be aggressive and lower our mortality rates, or do we want to go the direction of Italy?” Adams said. I like this guy. A lot. I suspect he will emerge as one of the voices of calm and reason, and a hero of this crisis. The facts, the facts, and only the facts. The fact that he poses it as a question, rather than an order, is pitch perfect.

At the federal level? In a word, no. Are you kidding? We don't even really have a plan for the people who live in nice houses and are standing in long lines in airports. It's probably now just a matter of time until those people are told to not go to an airport, because they can't fly anywhere anyway. Bernie talked about the homeless at the debate. My guess is at the local and state level - New York, San Francisco, California - there is planning going on. They are obviously sitting ducks. SF Bay Area counties require nearly 7M residents to stay home Vital businesses like grocery stores, banks and pharmacies will remain open, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said, and indispensable government services will continue. While bars were slated to close at midnight, restaurants will still fill takeout orders. “These measures will be disruptive to day-to-day life but there is no need to panic,” Breed said at a Monday press conference. “Your garbage will be picked up, police officers will be out there on the front line.” My assumption is that includes services for the homeless, from shelter to food. The sad thought is what happens if we get to the point where triage decisions are being made in ICU's in San Francisco. If the homeless even manage to get to the ICU, they will be the last ones to be treated, is my guess.

There's a legacy to all that. I've posted this article in several other threads. But it's good news, and one big reason to feel hopeful amidst a gathering storm. All the hard work and dead ends and deaths of that time did result in advances and drugs that have already saved lives in this outbreak. Optimism grows that drugs from past outbreaks may treat coronavirus Drugs developed in the past to treat malaria, AIDS and other respiratory syndromes are showing promise against coronavirus.

Sanjay Gupta said something on CNN tonight that sounds like it is in the same ballpark. He said that after we achieve a 1 % infection rate, the effectiveness of social distancing starts to break down. He didn't explain how we know that, or why it would break down after 1 %. It does make sense to me for the same reason as the guy you quoted. Eventually, it seems like you would get to the point where there are just too many infected people to contain it. Particularly if we do it the way South Korea does: trace, test, treat. In US terms, not even a vast government bureaucracy would be able to trace all the daily contacts of 3 million infected Americans. If it does get to that point, probably the only options are everybody gets sick, or we go into the kind of extreme quarantine and isolation that was effective in Wuhan. My growing impression is that our best hope is to lock down as much as we can now, test like crazy, flatten the curve, and then try to go after any infected cluster wherever it pops up. China, South Korea, and Singapore all seem to proving that some version of that can work. If you want to read a really sobering horror story scenario, read these two articles: Can herd immunity really protect us from coronavirus? Can You Get Coronavirus Twice? How Long Are You Immune After COVID-19? In that Coronacast you posted, there was a mention of the population gradually developing immunity to COVID-19, absent a vaccine. It's not the first time I've heard someone say that. The concept didn't make sense to me, until I read that first article. Now it makes sense to me. But as the article concludes, it only makes sense as a sort of nightmare scenario no sane nation would inflict on itself. Which is, I assume, why leaders all over the world who are smart are moving to lock down. The herd immunity concept, illustrated in that article in a nice graphic, is that a minimum of 70 % of us have to become infected and recover for herd immunity math to kick in. I'm guessing this might explain what Merkel was talking about when she used similar numbers. Presumably, if the vast majority of the population can't be infected any longer, even those without immunity are safe because the virus can't get enough hosts. The problem with this, as the article points out, is that for the virus to pass through the population so that 70 % recover it means 20 % or so have to get seriously sick. And 1 % or so have to die. The article gives numbers for the UK. So in US terms that's 60 million or so seriously sick people, and 3 million or so dead ones. In theory, that could "work" as long as you find a way to delay the spread so that you at least try to space out the hospital crisis. There's also an idea that you could protect the most vulnerable somehow while all this is happening. Yeah, okay. How? You can't tell seniors to just stay in their homes for a year while everybody else gets sick and recovers. Ultimately, the article concludes that what China did is a more humane approach, even if it sounds draconian. The further complication is that no one knows for sure whether you can get re-infected after you get sick and recover. And for those of you that want yet more masochism, here's an article in The Lancet that only focuses on a small group of in-patients that were seriously ill. Of that group of 181 patients, 53 ended up dying. Again, these were not all people infected. These were severely ill patients in two hospitals in Wuhan in the first month of the outbreak. Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study The good news is that even if you are one of the unfortunate ones to get severely ill, you still have pretty good odds of recovering. The bad news is that if you die, it ends up taking about three weeks from when you fall ill. And the cause ends up being sepsis, after your organs gradually shut down. If any of you ever knew the escort Bill, one of my best friends, I actually watched him die this way. It is not a pretty thing. I can only imagine what all these patients in Italy and the medical professionals serving them are going through.

A great article on what is working in South Korea. This is probably a preview of what the "Western democacy model" of COVID-19 containment will look like in the US and many other countries. Coronavirus in South Korea: How 'trace, test and treat' may be saving lives "I think that early patient detection with accurate tests followed by isolation can lower the mortality rate and prevent the virus from spreading," said Prof Kwon. "To learn from the past and prepare systems in advance… that might be the true power to overcome this new kind of disaster." There is no shortage of testing kits in South Korea. Four companies have been given approval to make them. It means the country has the capacity to test 140,000 samples a week. Prof Kwon believes the accuracy of South Korea's Covid-19 test is around 98%. The ability to test so many people has made the country a role model as others look to battle their own coronavirus outbreaks. But there have been missteps too. At least two patients died waiting for a hospital bed in Daegu, the worst affected city. The initial reaction was to quarantine everyone infected with the virus in a hospital bed, but now the doctors have learned to treat those with mild symptoms in residential centres and leave the clinical beds for those needing critical care. "We can't quarantine and treat all patients. Those who have mild symptoms should stay home and get treated," Dr Kim Yeon-Jae, an infectious disease specialist from the Korea National Medical Centre told me. "We should change our end goal strategy to lower death rates. So other countries like Italy, that see huge numbers in patients, should also change their strategies as well." Health officials believe this approach may be saving lives. The fatality rate for coronavirus in South Korea is 0.7%. Globally the World Health Organization has reported 3.4% - but scientists estimate that the death rate is lower because not all cases are reported. The preventative measures being taken in South Korea have so far involved no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement. Trace, test and treat is the mantra. So far this country of over 50 million people have been doing their bit to help. Schools remain closed, offices are encouraging people to work from home, large gatherings have stopped. However, slowly, day by day, more people are creeping back onto the streets of the capital city, Seoul. Restaurants, buses and subways are beginning to get busy again. Dealing with the threat of coronavirus is the new normal. Most people wear masks (if they can get hold of one). There are thermal imaging cameras in the entrances to major buildings. Bottles of hand sanitisers have been placed in lifts. There are even people dressed in costumes at subway entrances reminding you to wash your hands. This may be the new normal for South Korea and elsewhere. But health officials are still on edge and warning there is no room for complacency. One large outbreak at a church, office, exercise class or apartment block can change everything. And as for Rachel Kim, she got a text the day after her test. She doesn't have coronavirus. But she's glad she got tested. "Better to know", she said, "and that way I am not a danger to others." There is mostly good news, but one piece of bad news in this, in my eyes. The really good news is that in any Western country, good preparation brings rewards. We don't necessarily need a complete, martial law type lockdown, like China did. And like Spain and Italy seem to have elements of. Schools close, Disney closes, concerts are cancelled. But you can get food at a grocery store, and do the basic things you need to do. On a family level, China and South Korea made opposite choices, which reflect perhaps both family systems and how government works. In China, they took sick Moms who did not need hospitals to quarantine centers to get well. You did not have a choice. It was a logical approach. They found that the main way people got infected was through other family members. And in Wuhan, they had to build makeshift hospitals, anyway. So they took extreme measure to try to stop every individual infection. In South Korea, they told sick Moms that did not need hospitals to go home. It almost certainly caused more infections. If there were kids in the home, it was no big deal. If Grandpa lived with the family, that probably had to be addressed. But it left decisions like that up to individuals and families, which is obviously what would work better in the culture of the US, where many people doubt that the government can actually protect public health. The death rate of 0.7 % cited above is roughly the same death rate as the last wave of patients treated in Wuhan. (As opposed to something like 17 % with the first wave in Wuhan, when they had no idea what this virus was, or how to deal with it.) So all roads lead to Rome. There is plenty of information on how good protocols can save lots of lives in very different government systems. The bad news is what that article says: South Korea is hardly back to normal. At some point, we all want to go back to offices, schools, shopping malls, movie theaters. If there is an advantage to what China did, it is that maybe - huge maybe - taking extreme steps can mostly eradicate the virus, and people can mostly go back to normal without having to worry about getting infected or passing along an infection they don't know they have. Either way, both China and South Korea will clearly be in a mode where they immediately jump on even the smallest outbreak and "trace, test, and treat."